lebanese activists will soon have to deal with western tankies who will spend hours and days and years denying their lived experiences and supporting the sectarian regime.

The bad news: nothing you say will matter. your suffering does not matter to them. you can and probably will spend entire days of your lives trying to reason with them, begging them to see you as human. when that fails, you will be exhausted and demoralised.

you will be angry that well-known activists for causes you care about are as indifferent to your lived experiences as the tankies are. you will be so angry that you will wonder why so many self-proclaimed leftists couldn't care less about actual struggles against oppression 1/2

outside of their own immediate contexts. you will likely question some of the heroes you've celebrated along the way and wonder why you thought they'd support you. since you've learned from them, and support them, surely this must mean they recognise your struggle? 2/2

it doesn't. it should. but it doesn't.

but here's the extraordinary thing.

everything you've read so far applies very well to other places, like Syria, like Hong Kong.

I can literally guarantee you that the Hongkongers reading these words right now are nodding along.

so the good news: anti-authoritarians from Hong Kong, Syria, China, Taiwan, Venezuela, Iraq, Nicaragua, Russia, Ukraine and various other places have already been dealing with tankies for longer than you. I recommend connecting with them directly. they have quite a lot to say.

you will also find supporters among grassroots activists from places like Portland. Remember that despite being demonised by western tankies, Hongkongers have managed to be so resourceful that their protest tactics are now used around the world.

the main power of tankies is their ability to drain your energy. don't let them. tell them to f off, call them racists - because they are, to their very core, racists - and focus on linking up with antiauthoritarian activists around the world, from Hong Kong to Syria to Portland

if we adopt the tactics used in Hong Kong, Chile, Iraq, Portland, and so on, we would be creating internationalist facts on the ground that no tankie can destroy. build community resiliency across fictional and deadly borders. the nation state is just part of a much larger story.

I'll share a conversation I had with @lausanhk about Hong Kong and Lebanon https://lausan.hk/2020/revolution-everywhere-conversation-between-hong-kong-and-lebanon/